


i think of you and i still catch my breath

by confectionerybrick



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Brooklyn Nine-Nine Holiday Gift Exchange 2015, F/M, Johnny and Dora never happened, Pre-Relationship, set on a non-canon NYE after Det Dave Majors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-05-11 00:08:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5606152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/confectionerybrick/pseuds/confectionerybrick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stakeout, New Year's Eve stylez.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i think of you and i still catch my breath

**Author's Note:**

> This is a gift for Tumblr user proofinyou as part of the Brooklyn Nine-Nine Holiday Gift Exchange 2015. I wish I could have spent more time on it, but I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Prompt: AU where they aren't dating, aren't seeing anyone else but have to spend NYE together.

 

_maybe baby, we could have new year's day_

 

\--

 

“Sarge. _Saaaaarge_.”

“No, Jake.”

“ _Please_.”

“Get off my leg, Peralta!”

Amy rolls her eyes and turns her back so she can finish unpacking. Her phone has been vibrating so much that she had to turn it off to prevent boring a hole in the plastic table.

Holt needed some eyes on a club they think may be a front for the Trachtenberg crime family, who have suspected involvement in a few missing persons cases. Amy was long overdue for her turn at a stakeout and dutifully volunteered, but due to a huge party the club was holding on New Year's Eve, the assignment was due to last from December 29th to January 2nd and nobody else was keen to ring in the new year without their friends and family.

When Jake was also picked for the job, he and Charles let out a simultaneous howl of misery, their Times Square plans now dust in the wind.

The apartment they set up shop in is cramped and hasn't been renovated in a while; the living room-diner has peeling, floral wallpaper and a dirty coral carpet, and the bathroom and kitchen fittings are straight out of 1983. Due to the fact that the large building probably has over three-hundred residents, they don't look out of place strolling in wearing casual clothes and using a key. Terry and Charles pose as delivery men the same afternoon, parking a grocery van outside and carrying up boxes, some of which actually contain groceries whereas others hold surveillance equipment and personal items.

“Good luck,” Terry bids them as he stacks the now empty crates on top of each other, ready to depart. He easily extracts Jake from around his limbs, ignoring his last-ditch attempt to get free, and quickly leaves with a sullen Charles in tow.

“So, this is cozy, huh?” Jake sighs once they've set up their equipment next to the living room window, partially drawing the wooden blinds. “This place is even more dated than your apartment.”

Amy bats his arm. “Floral prints will _never_ go out of style, Jake.”

He glances pointedly at the faded wallpaper behind her, and she smirks.

“Fine, I'll give you that one.”

Jake goes to explore, rooting through the food set out on the kitchen counter and then going through to the other room.

“There's only one bedroom!” He shouts, becoming even more indignant.

Amy rolls her eyes, focusing on her laptop. “Inconvenient, but it's not as if we really need two.”

Jake strides back through, wiggling his eyebrows. “What are you trying to say, Santiago?”

“I'm saying that neither of us will be sleeping,” she comments, before hearing herself back and flushing. “Together. At the same time, I mean. We'll be doing it in shifts.”

“Keep going, I love it when you dig yourself into holes.”

“Shut up, Jake.”

 

Their first few hours are uneventful. The club, Easy Street (or as Amy dubs it, 'Sleazy Street') is closed for business as the staff set up for the big bash to come – large, ostentatious statues are wheeled in by men in sweat-stained overalls; liquor suppliers pull up as the sun begins to wink at them behind Brooklyn's skyline, carting in crates, boxes and barrels; men in black shirts tick off checklists and argue angrily in thick accents.

Despite Jake's obvious disgruntlement, they settle into their shift with ease. It's been a few years since Amy worked a multiple-day stakeout with Jake, and back then almost everything he did and said around her was designed to get on her nerves. Now, though, there's a calm air to their work, and Amy tries to cheer Jake up by giving nicknames to all the characters that work at the club. It just takes one small laugh for the rest to start barrel-rolling, and Amy leans back in her chair, pleased. It even makes up for the silences that hang after a few moments of concentration, heavy with conversations about feelings that took place months ago.

They have baked potatoes for dinner – Jake's with cheese, Amy's with tuna salad – and sit leisurely in front of the window in semi-darkness, discussing their targets. They attempt to identify the figures entering and leaving the club across the road, matching three men to the criminal database, all Trachtenberg brothers who have been arrested for various violent crimes over the years – but there's no suspicious behaviour, and nobody forcibly enters or leaves the club over the course of the early evening.

“It's nine, do you wanna go to bed?” Jake asks after checking his watch, referencing the shift schedule they'd set up.

“I'm not tired,” Amy says. “You can sleep first if you want. I know you were up late the past few nights solving that string of muggings with Terry.”

Jake nods in thanks and takes their plates over to the sink, stretching his arms with a groan. The smooth lines and muscles of his shoulders flex under his tight t-shirt like bird wings. Amy crosses one leg over the other and looks back out of the window, and bids him goodnight when he sweeps past her, patting her shoulder.

 

Amy hears his alarm go off at five, just as the dosage of coffee she's had over the night starts to wear off and she's genuinely drowsy. The club has been deserted for hours, and the Trachtenbergs have all departed in separate cars.

She's slumped on her arms when Jake strolls in wearing a loose shirt and boxers, yawning a greeting and heading to the coffee machine. In her sleepy state, Amy turns her head and steals herself a long look.

“Happy New Year's Eve!” Jake says, holding up the coffee pot to her. “Anything to report?”

“Nah - and no, thanks,” she yawns. He slumps down at the table opposite her, legs wide and hair scruffy, taking a large gulp of coffee. “Are you going to get dressed at all today?”

He blinks, and grins. “That depends.”

“On?”

“On whether you're going to start freaking out at seeing my underwear.”

He tries to pull his best mock-seductive face, but through his tiredness it just comes off as goofy.

“I'm not a teenage girl,” she replies coolly, trying to ignore the creative and gratuitous images her mind is supplying her with.

“Yeah, but you were madly in love with me, so...”

She sighs, not meeting his eyes, cheeks flushing. It's been a while since he even broached the subject of their complicated friendship, and although she often thinks about it it catches her off-guard. “I'm going to bed. Don't disturb me if you get cold and decide you want your pants.”

 

When she wakes up to blinding sunlight, she's clutching a juniper scented pillow with the sheets round her midriff, and Jake's jeans are gone from the chair they'd been thrown over when she dozed off.

 

\--

 

“Do you think we should check in with Holt?”

“And say what?”

Jake's reply is muffled by his toothbrush. He leans round the door frame, shirtless.

Amy shrugs. They've spent two days on stakeout now, and have gained no viable leads or information to tell the captain – but it feels strange not being in contact with him.

“Maybe that we're having a wild New Year's party and that he and Kevin are invited?”

Jake returns to the bathroom to spit, and when he comes back he's just in a towel.

“C'mon, man,” Amy protests. “Have some consideration for my eyes.”

“Don't pretend _your eyes_ aren't enjoying this,” Jake smirks, wiggling his eyebrows.

She considers him a moment, narrowing her gaze. He shifts under her stare, but holds her down; he's playing with her, she realises.

They've been acting at moving forward, pushing the preservation of their professional relationship and friendship to the forefront of their concerns, but it doesn't stop Amy catching Jake staring at her a little too long when he thinks she isn't noticing, or the wild dreams she has at night catching her by surprise.

Maybe it's the build-up of too much pretence, or the crisp spice of the holidays charging the air; Amy's not sure, but her next movement comes decisively and a little recklessly. The cup of lukewarm coffee she had absent-mindedly been sipping at falls smoothly onto her lap, and she throws up her hands and sighs.

“I'm going to take a shower,” she says, wilfully working past the nervous tremor in her limbs as she draws level with him in the doorway. They're so close that coffee drips onto Jake's toes, and she likes the way his eyes can't stop darting round her face. “And then I'll have to wash the only pair of pants I brought with me, and wait for them to dry. Hope this won't bother you, Peralta?”

He smirks, wide and cocky. “That's fine with me. So long as _you_ don't feel uncomfortable?”

She shakes her head and brushes past him, feeling her body thrum with that kind of adrenaline she gets when they're racing each other for a lead or a confession, and locks the bathroom door behind her.

Amy doesn't really need to wash her hair again but she does it anyway, and she picks up his shower gel instead of her own travel-size bottle which is already nearly empty. When she gets out, she rinses off her jeans in the sink, making them sopping wet, and hangs them over the towel warmer. She squeezes moisture out of her hair with her towel and dons her bra, panties and hockey shirt, which thankfully hangs to just above her mid-thigh.

She returns to the living room like nothing has happened to find Jake still in his towel, and deliberately doesn't catch his gaze as she sits down opposite him.

“Is Dmitri wearing that horrific powder-blue outfit again?” she asks conversationally, referring to the youngest Trachtenberg brother, who seems to have a flair for unconventionally coloured suits.

When Jake doesn't answer right away, she fights to hide a victorious smile.

“Um... what? What did you say?”

She meets his stricken, boyish eyes, and shakes her head. “Not important.”

He looks down at his hands, and the corner of his lips tweak upwards.

 

They spend the day in various states of undress like it's no big deal, and it's strange how simultaneously confident yet on edge Amy feels about the whole thing. Jake eventually changes from a towel to sweatpants, and she tries hard to ignore the way they sit snugly on his hips. Terry calls on Holt's behalf at around noon, and as Amy crosses her bare ankles on the table she thanks every deity she can think of that he hadn't decided to call round in person.

They share a bag of potato chips and chat about the case, the precinct, their moms. Later, Amy brews coffee and Jake boils pasta, moving round the kitchen in the soft, twilight rays that cut between the wooden slats of the blinds. It's only when they get particularly close to one another that Amy remembers the unspoken challenge he issued her by refusing to don a shirt, and the implications of such a challenge ending. She shakes her head.

They eat in silence, watching the club's evening patrons trickle in through the doors. It's snowing; thick fluffy clumps that race down onto the street and make women in tight dresses shriek with the cold. Amy leans back in her chair, electronic cigarette tucked between her lips, aware of Jake watching her.

“So, what did you so willingly give up to be here tonight?” he eventually asks. “Dinner with your mom?”

“ _No,_ ” Amy huffs. “Well – not exactly that, but a family thing, yeah.”

Recognition brightens Jake's face. “You finally got out of going to your mom's?”

Amy shoots him a quizzical look and reaches for the bag of candy that sits between them on the table.

“You've been complaining about going every year since we started working together,” He elaborates, as though she's being slow – she forgets how good his memory is, or maybe she's just constantly surprised to learn how much he knows about her. “You always say your mom nags you for your life choices, and each year one of your cousins announces an engagement or pregnancy – or both, conveniently at the same time...”

She laughs, nudging his leg with her foot under the table.

“Yeah. I need to get over my hangups about it, really, but...” She chews on a Reese's Piece, trying to articulate her feelings properly. “I love my family but every time we have a party, it's like a big competition to see whose life is in the best order. And I never win.”

She knows she sounds petty, but Jake just laughs.

“Wow, that does not sound very Santiago-ish _at all._ ”

Amy throws a piece of candy at him, which he deflects and then eats.

Amy hadn't always hated New Year's Eve. When she was young, the parties on her street were fun; around one house in every six or seven would be open to friends, family and neighbours for food and merriment, and she and her brothers would play games with their cousins until their eyes drooped and limbs were heavy. At five minutes to midnight, everyone would rush out into the whipping cold and huddle together for the countdown, and Amy's heart felt like it would burst with the festivity and the promise of a year where everything would miraculously be better for her – no bullies at school, more appreciation from her teachers, and the bags to disappear from under Abuela's eyes.

But as she grew older, she realised that the anticipation was futile, and a simple chime of the clock was not magic enough to change the future for the better. You had to work to make good things happen, and not even then was it a guarantee.

She shudders at the thought of turning up on her mother's street to be interrogated by her old neighbours, her cheeks pinched by old blind relatives while being made to feel guilty about not being married yet. It has happened every year since she was twenty-four when her brother Leo announced his engagement, and she always feels one step away from becoming Bridget Jones, forced into a horrible outfit in order to be introduced to somebody's terribly boring cousin who is newly single and looking for a rebound.

“Sorry you're missing Times Square,” Amy says, because she really is. Jake's face is blank for a second, and then he smiles and moves round to her side of the table, pulling a chair up next to her in order to check the surveillance footage.

“It's okay,” he says. “I'm not too cut up about it any more. Besides, it turns out that I have great company.”

Amy can't help herself; she grins, wide and shy and tucked into herself. She gets a whiff of his delicious juniper aftershave and feels imaginary pride swell inside her at the idea of turning up to her mother's New Year's Eve party, Jake on her arm, all charming smiles and reassuring touches. It's times like this when she wonders why she ever made her stupid no cops rule, when the one person she actually wants to date is a cop.

She crosses her legs, remembering that they're bare, but he isn't looking at them. He isn't even looking at the surveillance, or the club outside, but at her face instead. She feels his nervous breath on her cheek, and before she knows it she's tugging him in, tasting his candy-coated lips and feeling him respond beneath her fingers.

“The ball hasn't dropped yet, Santiago,” he whispers, pulling back slightly, eyes flicking all over her face.

“Oh, screw that,” Amy replies, and Jake laughs like he's shaking months of relief from his body. “This is way overdue.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title and intro taken from _Maybe Baby (New Year's Day)_ by Sugarland.


End file.
